The Clan
Marjoribanks Society Gatherings
The next Clan
Marjoribanks Society gathering will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland on the 27th and 28th June 2014.
This is planned to coincide with the Bannockburn re-enactment in Stirling on the 28th and 29th June.
New office bearers for the Clan society will be elected and there will be visits arranged to locations that
are significant to the Clan members.
Please contact the clan President, Patricia Baillie Strong (http://scr.im/pbstrong) for more details.
The last Clan Marjoribanks gathering was held
on July 25th, 2009 at the home of Patricia Baillie Strong in Regent
Terrace, Edinburgh, Scotland. This date was chosen to coincide with The
Scottish Gathering celebrations in Edinburgh that weekend. Twenty
people attended the Meeting and eighteen marched in the Parade up the
Royal Mile from Holyrood Palace to the Castle in the evening.
The Chief Andrew
Marjoribanks welcomed all those present and started the Meeting at 11.0
a.m. by ringing the Balbardie bell. He mentioned how Robert
Marjoribanks in Canada and his wife Nancy had more or less run the Clan
Marjoribanks Society single-handedly for many years until retiring in
2005 due to ill health. Bob’s departure had meant a big loss
for
the Clan and caused the first major upheaval since the founding of the
Society in 1987.
The
outgoing President Katharine
Cousland, said that the original manufacturer of the Marjoribanks
tartan (Dalgleish Mills) has now gone out of business but John
Marjoribanks said that any Scottish weaver will make up the tartan as
it is registered in the official list of Scottish tartans. Zazzle is an
American company on the web that will supply Marjoribanks brooches.
The
outgoing secretary, Patricia Baillie
Strong, said she had saved the membership list digitally on the web
(Google documents) so that it can be accessed by all the committee
wherever they are. 450 people had been invited to the Gathering and the
Marjoribanks General Meeting in Edinburgh.
The
following were proposed, seconded and
elected as Office Bearers of the Clan Marjoribanks Society.
President:
Patricia
Baillie Strong
Secretary:
Caroline
Morris
US Treasurer:
Carol
Leake
Genealogist and UK Treasurer:
Roger Marjoribanks
US Newsletter Editor:
Amanda Long
UK Newsletter Editor:
John Marjoribanks
Publisher:
Stuart Baillie Strong
The office of Vice-President was left open for the Committee to co-opt.
It was felt that the Vice-President should be an American. After the
Meeting, the Committee decided to appoint Jonathan Baillie Strong as
Webmaster to develop the Clan Marjoribanks Society web page and to
encourage younger people to join the Society, for example, by using
webpages like Twitter and Facebook.
John
Marjoribanks proposed several
changes to the previous Constitution adopted on 9th June 1990. Several
amendments were considered and agreed. The key ones were:
- that, on the basis of
advice from the Lord Lyon, the name be
changed from “The Marjoribanks Family” to the
“Clan
Marjoribanks Society”;
- that, in order to leave
greater discretion in the hands of the
Editors, the requirement that “The Marjoribanks
Letter”
should be produced “at least once a year” should be
an
aspiration rather than an imperative;
- that there should be a
Treasurer (USA) and a Treasurer (UK) to
reduce difficulties with money transfers;
- that there should be an
Editor (USA), an Editor (UK) and a
Publisher for “The Marjoribanks Letter”: the two
editors
would solicit and edit contributions and the publisher would put the
newsletter together and handle distribution;
- that, rather than being
bound to hold a General Meeting every
year, the frequency of meetings should be left to the Council to
determine: it was clearly the will of the meeting that all meetings of
Marjoribanks Kin should be within the framework of the Society,
although not necessarily all would be constituted a General Meeting of
the Society.
The Society genealogist Roger
Marjoribanks encouraged as many
people as possible to join the DNA project to research Marjoribanks
ancestry. Bill Jackson is in charge of this.
The new President, Patricia
Baillie Strong thanked the outgoing
President, Katharine Cousland for her hard work and dedication.
Some Photographs
of the 2009 meeting:
Past &
present presidents & genealogist
Attendees at the Clan
meeting
Some of the Clan members at the meeting
The Chief's brother and the
Chief
Clan Marjoribanks in the
Queen's Park
At the start of the Royal Mile
Passing the
Scottish Parlaiment
Clan members walking up the Royal Mile
Near the top of the Royal Mile & the castle
The
flag of the Marjoribanks Chief